Monday, February 11, 2019

One of the newest entry in the Indian market, Azerbaijan as a destination has already tasted a good success in terms of tourist arrivals growth from India in 2018. Around 40,000 Indians visited Azerbaijan in 2018 recording a whopping 175 per cent growth in 2018 despite any noticeable market development activities in India, indicating a latent demand in the Indian market for the country on the Caspian coast.
Azerbaijan Tourism Board (ATB) opened a Representation Marketing office in India last December to grow its share of India’s tourism pie and attended South Asia’s biggest travel show SATTE 2019 in India last month as the “Focus Country.” Around three million international tourists are visiting Azerbaijan annually with Russia, Georgia, Turkey, the GCC and central Europe countries, and now India too, being some its key tourism source markets.
Speaking on the ATB’s growing interest in the Indian outbound travel market on the sidelines of SATTE, Florian Sengstschmid, CEO, ATB, said, “Azerbaijan has seen a great increase in Indian tourists in 2018. One of the reasons for the growth rate was a very active Air Arabia pushing the new destination of Baku with their network here. It also shows that without our support a very interesting market has established and the growth rate proves there is obviously great potential and interest for Azerbaijan. This is all the reason for us in intensifying our activities in the Indian market. We now have an India representation office working from the beginning of this year.”
Furthermore, he informed, “In the pipeline, are non-stop flights between India and Baku by Azerbaijan Airlines in the next few months, very important factor because we are now mainly serviced by the GCC connections. Once the non-stop flight is established, this will also bring new opportunities in terms of new tourism experiences. For now, it was mainly corporate events coming to Baku, the new flight connectivity will bring the target audience we are looking at and the scope of looking beyond Baku.”
11/02/19 Shayan Mallick/T3